


crash/burn/crash/repeat

by ScarTissue



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Kents a douchecanoe without a paddle, M/M, okay the paddle was Jack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-04-01 02:52:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4003066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScarTissue/pseuds/ScarTissue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The problem isn’t that the car won’t start. Its just that Kent can’t start the car.</p>
            </blockquote>





	crash/burn/crash/repeat

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry but I want to put Kent in the trash and then order twelve I just don't know about this dickweed

 

.

 

 

.

 

 

The problem isn’t that the car won’t start. Its just that Kent can’t start the car.

 

 

Okay, he can start the car. He just won’t turn the damn key.

 

 

“C’mon Parse,” Kent murmurs. “C’mon,” he says to himself, louder this time. His voice bounces in the empty air for a few seconds. He hadn’t realized he was shouting.

 

 

At least they couldn’t have heard in the Haus. The cars totally soundproof, double padded and everything, he’d paid an arm and a leg for it, but…

 

 

But when you’re the only (known/current) queer player in the league, any measure of safety to be found is appreciated.

 

The problem isn’t that he might be late for practice tomorrow. And Kent is _never_ late for practice. Ice time keeps him going- it's literally his life, and livelihood (but that’s never been what this is about). Kent has played through colds, hangovers, fevers, injuries from ankle to shoulder to that time they fucking defibrillated him- that had been wild. He had played through Jack’s overd- through Jack’s time out. Nothing stopped him.

 

 _Parsnips_ , he can hear his teammates say, _finally cutting your bones some slack? They fucking need it, eh?_ ( _Don’t **eh** me_ , he always thinks, in between cringing out of guilt and grief and the time he slammed his actually-Canadian liney against the glass so hard it cracked and he had to sit out the next two games. _You don’t know what that even fucking **means**. You haven’t earned it._ ) _Finally got a puckbunny to keep you up late? Cause its not like you were with us at the show, or the game, or the meeting or the bar or **ever** \- _

 

The problem isn’t that he’s been drinking. If anything, he hasn’t drank near enough: it’s midnight on a Saturday for Christ's sake, the sheer level of trashed he usually would be is making his fingers itch, absent bottle phantomly sliding against his palm.

 

 

Maybe he should be worried about that.

 

Fuck, he _is_ worried, that’s why he came here, isn’t it? He’s worried out of his fucking mind half the time. But that’s not really the problem, not all of it.

 

The problem isn’t that the plane ticket is nonrefundable- he makes twice that, _thrice_ that in four hours. He could buy and sell the damn plane, probably.It's not the people he brushed off that were probably very nice, or the drinks and chips he knocked over by the door that he just stalked past, not the blond, tiny boy with a tiny, gorgeous face on the stairwell outside Jack’s door, next to Jack earlier, close enough to touch shoulders and thighs and mouths if they so much as turned. Its not the rental car that he might crash just because he fucking can, because something should look as twisted and wrecked and on fire as he feels right now-

 

“Start the car.” Kent straightens in his seat, grips the steering wheel until his knuckles are white and all the tendons in his forearms are straining under shiny, tanned skin.”Start the car,” he tells himself through gritted teeth, and he pretends his jaws clenched so tight he can barely speak, completely removed from the lump in his throat. “Put the key in the ignition, turn all the way over, put it in and turn and drive the fuck away from this shithole, start the car, dammit start the car-”

 

The problem is that Jack is the last time Kent can remember being Happy, plural, long term, in-for-the-show happy. And Jack is happy here: so happy he won’t even have Kent in the damn vicinity, like he’ll stink up the place. _Not that it already doesn't,_ he thinks, that piece of shit green mold colony shaped like a couch, beer stains all over the shitty carpet, the flour and candied fruit caked on the kitchen counters from team cooking that went all too hell, sticky gloss table from too many people too boisterously having breakfast and lunch and dinner altogether, laughter wrung out like water stains on its fucking ceiling-

 

“ _God dammit_ ,” Kent’s sobbing into the steering wheel. He hiccups so hard he can feel the wheel creak against the plastic. “God dammit, god….”

 

 

Jack’s eyes had been so _clear_ when he walked in. They looked like those blue cut glass rocks that museums sold for twice their worth in boxes and boxes, sunlit crystal and endless spring skies, and when Kent saw he swears he could breath for the first time since he didn’t even know when ( _since the last time he was at Samwell_ , his mind supplies).

 

 

 

Kent eyes have never looked like anything but ice.

 

(When Jack saw _him_ , the clouds rolled over so fast he almost faltered. It was like time just fucking jumped around them, like it was 2015 in the Haus with a kegster roaring up and down the street but he and Kent were eighteen again, standing in their little bubble of pressure and tension and imminent-fucking-victory, or in Jack’s case just pressure and tension. Kent could still see their whole glorious future ahead of them, Number 1 and 2 draft picks and the same team, same amazing, zinging chemistry and Stanley cup after Stanley cup that glinted so brightly Kent couldn’t see Jack falling to fucking pieces right beside him.

 

 

 

Who would’ve guess which one of them would end up on crash/burn/crash/repeat.)

 

The problem is that Kent was sitting in Vegas last night, in a big, white walled, sleek, beautiful _empty_ house he had paid for in full, in cash and thought that he would like to go home now, please. No more team that he never bonded with because they couldn’t hold up to Jack’s quiet, tenuous control over his ice time. No more conferences where the “lady friend” questions are only getting more and more pointed, and answers are shedding to paper thin walls, his shadow starting to show against the backlight of the too bright rink. No more fame, no more lonely night and days and weeks, _no more._

 

 

The problem isn’t that Kent has here before, thrown out by Jack in the middle of the night or day or whenever he showed up unannounced after _snap snap snapping_ at the rubber bands that hold Jack’s self control together so he can get an honest to god reaction out of him, so he can be seared by blue eyes and feel _alive_. Its that once he leaves, he will never be here again.

 

 

 

 

The problem is that Kent wants to go home, and he thinks he may have just shut the door behind himself for the last time.


End file.
